Did Joe Biden Create 5.2 Million Jobs?

——————————————————————————————————————————–Note: 12th in a series on President Obama’s job creation record<=== Previous || Next==>——————————————————————————————————————————–

Jobs and the economy! Jobs and the economy!

Someone should have told moderator Martha Radditz that at last night’s vice presidential debate. It is what this election is all about. Instead, we got 40 minutes of foreign policy.

Important, yes… germane, no. In a 90 minute debate it is a waste of voter time to squabble over a timeline for troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. But that is what Radditz delivered.

In the few minutes between misdirected time talking about stuff like the tone of the campaign, Biden managed to slip in this comment:

We have 5.2 million new jobs, private sector jobs. We need more, but 5.2 million — if they’d get out of the way, if they get out of the way and let us pass the tax cut for the middle class, make it permanent…

– Vice President Joe Biden, VP Debate, 10/11/2012

On so many levels, this statement reveals how out-of-touch the Administration is with the central issue of this campaign – JOBS!

The Misinformed Vice President

In the first debate President Obama did something he had not done before… he fibbed about how many private-sector jobs had been created over 30 months.

Apparently, not to be outdone by the President, VP Biden told an even bigger fib. He said there had been 5.2 million private-sector jobs created. That is about 500,000 more jobs more than the latest BLS September figures show.

For the record, private-sector job growth over the last 31 months is 4.7 million. Since Biden assumed office the private-sector has created a paltry 512 thousand total jobs. That’s pathetic.

Worse still, overall U.S. job growth in 31 months is only 4.2 million jobs. 4.2 million might sound like a lot, but it is barely keeping up with population growth. In other words, under Obama, all the jobs lost in the Great Recession are permanently lost!!

The excuse of an inherited situation is worn out. Half the jobs lost in the Great Recession were lost before Obama took office. We need more traction than 512,000 new jobs in nearly four years. We don’t need excuses.

Joe Biden on Job Creation

The Vice President then goes on to imply we need to make the middle-class tax cut permanent to create more jobs. Whoops! Wrong again.

What he was talking about is making permanent a tax cut that has already been in place for 12 years. Keeping it the way it is already doesn’t create any jobs. It will only prevent the loss of jobs.

Challenger Paul Ryan on Taxing the Rich

Biden spent a lot of time talking about taxing the rich. Mostly, he talked about the super rich, the top 120,000 U.S. wage earners. He said maintaining their current tax cut would take away $800 billion from funding government over the next 10 years. That must be “their fair share” that we hear so much about.

Biden and the entire Obama Administration pass off taxing the rich as a primary policy for solving fiscal problems. It can’t do that. Not even close.

Responding to taxing the rich Ryan said this:

Look, if you taxed every person in successful small business making over $250,000 at a hundred percent, it’d only run the government for 98 days. If everybody who paid income taxes last year, including successful small businesses, doubled their income taxes this year, we’d still have a $300 billion deficit.

You see, there aren’t enough rich people and small businesses to tax to pay for all their spending.

– Paul Ryan, VP Debate, 10/11/2012

Ryan’s point:

Tax every rich person, not just the super rich, at 100% and it can’t pay the bills

Double EVERYONE’s taxes and it can’t pay the bills

There are not enough people, rich or poor, to pay the bills

The current Administration can’t seem to grasp that. Even at 100% taxation, revenues from those making $250K/yr or more would bring in less than 1/4th what is needed to pay current government expenditures.

Taxing the rich can’t cut it. Its impossible, no matter how great it sounds on the campaign trail.

We need real solutions. We need real plans. We need policies that can work, not what we have now.

Conclusions

Like President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden is in denial about how bad off the economy is… hence the “5.2 million jobs” fib.

Because they are in denial, they can’t come up with a credible plan to fix the economy and create jobs. The main thrust of Obama’s plan appears to be pushing the $500 billion American Jobs Act and taxing the rich.

The American Jobs Act was rejected exactly one year ago to the day of the VP debate. Paul Ryan clearly pointed out its impossible to squeeze enough money out of the rich to pay for existing bills, let alone taking on any new ones.

Please read Romney’s 5-point plan on his campaign web site. Its weak on details and probably won’t create 12 million jobs, that’s ambitious, but there it is.

Please read President Obama’s Economic Plan on his campaign web site. If you find one in there then let me know. I’d like to read it to. I think we all would.

Here is something glaring that no one seems to catch either. Obama wants to raise taxes on those making $250,000 or more. But, so does Romney actually, by eliminating or capping itemized deductions; it has the same effect. Biden could have pounded Ryan on the Republican’s inconsistency, or Ryan could have announced “Compromise” can be reached with a Republican Congress as the fiscal cliff looms, but Obama is the intransigent one. But no, both are knuckleheads following handlers’ scripts. The moderator should have caught that obvious one and thrown an MLB-sized slider pitch to see who would strike out. The moderator missed that one big time.

The mainstream media has got so used to calling Republicans obstructionists that few people who see the news or watch TV could ever believe Obama is intransigent and uncompromising even though he clearly is. It would never occur to them.

That being said, I believe Obama has backed off taxing those making 250K or more to those making $1 million or more – “millionaires and billionaires”. Biden singled out his remarks directed at the super rich only. Those are the folks making $8 million or more – the 120,000 richest people in America.

Romney’s tax plan is revenue neutral. Everyone gets a tax break. The difference is made up by cutting some of the $1.1 trillion in yearly tax loopholes there are. The rich are the ones that use most of the loopholes, so they will retain a higher tax burden.

Both candidates intend to tax the rich more. The difference is that the Romney plan reduces government control by reducing the number of loopholes that it has always used to curry favors, payback for campaign donations and for political cronyism with constituency groups or individuals.

I didn’t think the moderator made the best question choices and over-weighted the time on foreign policy and other non-essentials.

Rumor says Obama was at her wedding. Do not know if true or not, or just more lies being floated around in this age of negativism.

One thing that does come out of the lopsided foreign policy part, is that this administration has a lot explaining to do on the Libya disaster. And why is it the Intelligence Community always gets thrown under the bus. I understand that if other nations employ the shady characters at the edges, we need to as well, But blaming them always creates more spooky stuff.

On GPS(Global Public Square) this morning, the most intellectually stimulating political program on TV, Fareed Zakaria had a panel discussion on Romney’s foreign policy speech that gave Romney surprisingly high praise.

I don’t know about the wedding part and don’t even think it really matters… but I do agree the Administration has a lot of explaining to do about the Libyan killings. Changes should be made and someone held accountable.